I read a blog post the other day about buying wine. It was geared towards a reader who knows nothing about wine…I qualify as the perfect reader for this blog. Here is what I know about wine:
- Red
- White
- Drunk
I’m not much of a drinker and I can’t really drink much more than one glass of wine and still tell time, so it goes without saying that I don’t know anything about wine. But, I wish I did. I wish I could walk into a wine store and know exactly what I was looking for. I wish I knew why the store is separated into regions and grapes or whatever. All I know is that when I walk in the store, I don’t know anything about wine but I PRETEND I do. I just want to get the whole wine buying process over with as soon as possible. It goes something like this:
- I walk in with an air of confidence (to scare away any “help”)
- I stroll over to an aisle as if that is the exact aisle I was looking for.
- I pick up the bottle in a way that hides the fact that I really just like the picture on it.
- I pretend to not look at the price.
I then buy the bottle that isn’t too cheap (because it can’t be any good) but isn’t too expensive (because I wouldn’t even know if it was worth it). I do this silly fan dance every time I go in to buy wine. Now, the guy who owns the store knows my game because he has seen countless jokers like myself do the same thing for years…but I can’t help myself…I don’t want to admit to someone that I know nothing about a subject that I don’t have any business knowing anything about anyway. Think about the nonsense in that last statement!!!
And that, my friends, is exactly how YOU behave around your finances. Money is something you feel like you should know something about…but why do you feel that way? Do you have advanced degrees in it? Have you spent 20 years studying it? You feel like you should know something…so you pretend you do. You avoid the “help” because you don’t want to admit that you don’t know the difference between passive and active investment management, you have no idea why you might want a Revocable Trust and you couldn’t care less about the difference between whole life and universal life insurance. Here is what most know about money:
- Make
- Spend
- Broke
I get it…I really do. In my life, I qualify as an expert in maybe four or five areas (and one of those is baseball). But if you continue to dance the fan dance in this area of your life, you won’t walk away with a crappy bottle of wine…you will do irreparable harm to yourself and your family because money is the lifeblood of your family’s future.
The wine article I read was awesome because it gave me a few quick ideas of what to do in order to buy wine even if I know nothing about it. The best idea? Establish a relationship with a local wine store owner. It didn’t say “read up on as many blogs as you can” or “move to France and study wine as you build a palate over 20 years”. Nope. It simply stated the obvious…that I could establish a relationship with someone who has put in all the work and who wants to help me ENJOY wine.
I’m telling you the exact same thing. Establish a relationship with someone in your local community who is an specialist in the areas of money and who has spent a good amount of time in the money business. That person can bring you the wisdom you need and can help you enjoy your money and allow you to finally have some confidence in the area of personal finance.